Update: see the comments for some reactions. I’m sure YouTube video will be circulating before too long. Actually, it’s up now, though it might be taken down quickly if the Tonight Show lawyers get wind of it. Hat tip to Jackson posting at Reasonfor the link.

The New York Times has dedicated a blog to the many accounts of spying on Americans, wiretapping journalists, consorting with the mob, breaking and entering, plotting assassinations, and other varieties of skulduggery found in the CIA’s “family jewels” file. So far the family jewels–unsurprisingly–have revealed very little that wasn’t wasn’t already known. NYT reporter Tim Weiner, whose Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA is the one of the most important books that’s been published this year, is among the bloggers.

The current issue of The American Conservative includes a somewhat lengthy piece by me on Barry Goldwater and his legacy, including bits about the “Mr. Conservative” documentary and the recent spate of Goldwater books (about half of them from liberals).

Then again, all of the top-tier Republicans are neocon favorites, as Bill Kristol says:

“I would say, as a card-carrying member of the neoconservative conspiracy,” said William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, “that I think Giuliani, McCain and Thompson are all getting really good advice — and Romney.” Mr. Kristol said that none of the leading Republican candidates “buy any of these fundamental criticisms that Bush took us on a radically wrong path, and we have to go to a pre-9/11 foreign policy.”

The results of Fox’s post-debate poll — Paul leading, followed by Huckabee, then Giuliani, with the rest in single digits — have prompted me to realize something that I should have considered earlier: Huckabee’s rise is coming at the expense of Thompson and Romney. That makes sense, since the Values Voters are the key Republican demographic who so far have not had a dog in this fight and have heretofore been splitting their vote (one imagines, anyway) between Romney, Thompson, and the Huck.

So I’m now thinking Huck will do very well in Iowa and be a contender in other primaries. Romney and Thompson will continue to hamper each other, with Huck also detracting from their momentum. It makes the scenario I’ve been predicting — a Giuliani nomination with Huck as veep — even likelier.

For Romney to move ahead, he’ll need to win both Iowa and New Hampshire and beat Giuliani in South Carolina or Florida. And even that might not do it: Giuliani might be able to survive trailing in the early states if he can win Florida, as long as there’s no single consensus candidate by that point — that is, as long as Thompson, rather than Romney, wins South Carolina and Giuliani finishes respectably.

The Washington Times calls Giuliani’s strategy “riksy.”National Journal, on the other hand, offers an analysis similar to my own. It’s not that Giuliani is the first choice of most Republican constituencies, it’s that none of his opponents has a bigger geographic base. Certainly Romney doesn’t; Thompson potentially could, but he’s barely a contender in Iowa and New Hampshire, and unless he can beat Giuliani in both South Carolina and Florida, he’ll be heading into Feb. 5 with very little momentum.

A further point that suggests Giuliani is going to get the nomination is that he continues to be seen by Republicans as the candidate most likely to beat Hillary. The focus group of zombies that Frank Luntz assembled to evaluate the Republican debate tonight thought so, and they didn’t get behind anyone else as a consensus choice for the nomination.

To keep the values voters base happy and head off a third-party threat, as well as to diversify the ticket’s geographic appeal, I can certainly see Giuliani picking the Huck as a veep.

It would, of course, be the worst Republican ticket of all, since it would combine the socially liberal Giuliani with the economically liberal Huckabee, the union sealed with a commitment to continuing Bush’s failed foreign policy. And I can certainly see Giuliani giving in to Huckabee’s health-nut desires to run everybody’s diet. It would be the one thing that could make Giuliani’s police-state authoritarianism even worse: adding a fundamentalist and calorie-counter component to it.

Subscribe

The Tory Anarchist syndicates its weblog posts
and Comments using a technology called
RSS (Real Simple Syndication). You can use a service like Bloglines to get
notified when there are new posts to this weblog.